Archive for the 'Baltic States' Category

In his new English language memoir entitled, “Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage and Survival” (Gefen Publishing), internationally renowned former Soviet refusenik, Rabbi Yosef Mendelevitch takes his readers on a compelling trajectory of his life in this deeply poignant narrative. As a young boy growing up as an atheist in the Stalinist era, Rabbi Mendelevitch soon embarked on a journey to his Jewish heritage and emerged as a dynamic leader in the Jewish underground movement in the former Soviet Union. After 11 grueling years in the Gulag of Siberian forced labor camps, his dream was realized when he immigrated to Israel in 1981. Today, he is a noted Orthodox educator in the religious Zionist movement. Rabbi Mendelevitch was recently on a book tour in the United States and took time out of his schedule for this interview.

Q: You had already published your memoir in Hebrew many years ago. Why did you decide to come out with an English version at this particular juncture in time?

Apologizing for terrorism is completely indefensible. Have people forgotten MLK and Gandhi’s teachings? Have people forgotten the Velvet and Singing Revolutions in Eastern Europe against the Soviet/Russian Empire?

…Sometime in the 1970s, as a generation born under communism came of age, people began to look back with longing to the days when Poland was less gray, less monocultural. They found inspiration in the period between the world wars, the time that was the Poland of the Jews.

“You cannot have genocide and then have people live as if everything is normal,” said Konstanty Gebert, founder of a Polish-Jewish monthly, Midrasz. “It’s like when you lose a limb. Poland is suffering from Jewish phantom pain.”…

Human evolution can be pretty intense, horrifying, ironic, and even hopeful. Some Eastern Europeans have not forgotten the concept of atonement woven into their culture by Jews. And the Jewish revival is happening in nearby countries like Lithuania and Estonia, also. More, from the International Herald Tribune:

Peres makes a valid comparison: The tiny nation of Estonia has been bullied by much larger neighbors (e.g., Germany and Russia). Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors bent on her destruction. If “Estonia is a Nazi state,” as the Stalinist die-hards maintain, then why have its top leaders, plus Israeli and other Jewish dignitaries, attended the opening of a new synagogue in Tallinn? From JTA:

The BBC’s Richard Galpin says it [the removal of a Soviet "war memorial" in Tallinn] is being perceived as one insult too many by local ethnic Russians, after what they feel has been years of discrimination against them by the majority Estonian population.

Discrimination? Russians conquered, plundered, and subjugated every one of their neighboring countries, under czars and commissars alike. Russians should be apologizing, not unhappy.

Unhappy just like the Arab/Muslim world is with little Israel vis-à-vis the “Palestinian question.” In reality, the Arab/Muslim world resents Israel’s freedom and prosperity, while they live in squalor. It is the same with Russian resentment of the tiny Baltic States, like Estonia. Russian troops, under the flag of the Soviet “Union,” invaded Estonia during World War II, and didn’t leave until 1994.

…But the Estonians believe much of the tension is being whipped up by forces outside the country, i.e. Russia itself.

During the years of Soviet occupation after World War II, tens of thousands of Estonians were killed. And they say their country was effectively colonised with many Russians being brought in as workers and military personnel. …

To this, “A [Russian] foreign ministry spokesman described the decision as ‘blasphemous and inhumane’.” The Russian government is talking like it had the “right” to annex Estonia in 1940, but Estonians haven’t forgotten what their former Russian tormentors (occupiers) did to them for 50 years. How would you like to see a Nazi “war memorial” erected in your hometown, say in Tel Aviv or Chicago? Nazi or Soviet — it’s all the same.

Is this a first? The word “collaborator” is being applied to traitors who helped the Russians/Soviets oppress millions of Eastern Europeans. The context involves a Polish bishop, Stanislaw Wielgus, who “confessed to collaborating with the communist police.” This is a start, but when will there be a Nuremberg-style tribunal to try all the Soviet murderers and their indigenous collaborators?

For those still wearing Che Guevara t-shirts and pining for the “good old days” of the Soviet (Russian) Empire, you may want to consult with the people who had the “pleasure” of living under communist domination. By and large, the peoples of the former Soviet “republics” have voted to move closer to Europe and the U.S. and away from Russia, where “influence stems from the former Soviet organs of repression.” Case in point: Lithuania, from the BBC:

Dick Cheney made a very important visit this weekend, and reminded Russia to lay off countries that it once persecuted under its old czars, under its second generation czars (the Soviets), and under its new czar, Vladimir Putin. Cheney visited Lithuania, Croatia, and Kazakhstan. In Lithuania’s capital of Vilnius,

…he accused Russia of backsliding on democracy. …

He accused Russia of using its vast energy resources to blackmail its neighbours, and said Moscow had a choice to make between pursuing democratic reforms and reversing the gains of the past decade.

In Croatia, Cheney

…praised the former Communist countries for their willingness to introduce democratic reforms – as well as for their involvement in US-led military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“You who aspire to join these organisations [Nato and the EU] help rejuvenate them and help us re-dedicate ourselves to the basic and fundamental values of freedom and democracy,” Mr Cheney told Ivo Sanader of Croatia, Sali Berisha of Albania and Vlado Buckovski of Macedonia.

“We also believe that it’s very important for both Nato and the EU to take in the new members.”

Putin is delusional: he thinks he’ll be able to recreate former Soviet “glories.” The U.S. stands squarely in his way. Last year, President Bush visited Riga, the capital of Latvia, and brought to the attention of the world the suffering of the three Baltic nations (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) under Soviet/Russian domination. Now Cheney has visited the Baltic again, reminding Russia to back off.

Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia have all joined NATO. Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, and Ukraine are on track to become new members.

Of course, Russia is crying fowl, as Eastern Europeans are voting with their feet to join NATO and the EU — not forging closer ties with Moscow’s czarist, neo-imperialists.

Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday shrugged off negative Russian reaction to his criticism of President Vladimir Putin, saying he had merely described ”the extent to which they seem to resist the development of strong democracies” in Eastern Europe.

Eastern Europeans remember all too well what is was like to live under Russia’s hammer and sickle. Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga most eloquently explained the differences between the leftist appeasers of dictatorship and the new democracies:

We certainly have seen the results of appeasement… It’s much easier to tolerate a dictator when he’s dictating over somebody else’s life and not your own. We have suffered through half a century because dictators were allowed to proceed unchecked in the faint hope that they would somehow see the light, or reform, or simply by indifference to those who have been affected by their actions.

Every time I bring up the Holocaust, the same thing happens. Some of the people want Hitler’s genocide to be the archetype of a people’s suffering, denying others their right to bring similar atrocities to light. Some want to deny it (like current Iranian President Ahmadinejad). Some want to straddle the line or apologize: “There would have been no Hitler if not for the reparation payments put upon Germany after World War I.” What are we to do, create a chart ranking peoples’ suffering: “mine was worse than yours?” These were all horrors. Calling one a genocide while not allowing another to call it a holocaust is sophistry. Denial is just historic ignorance — or caused by some ulterior motive, like racism.

By far, the biggest “controversies” arise when I compare Hitler’s genocide to the various communist atrocities of the same century. The extreme leftists always get upset because it challenges their beliefs about “socialism.” They tend to subscribe to the Leninist adage, “The ends justify the means.” Some get defensive, or perhaps feel a tad bit guilty, because, after all, Stalin helped us defeat Hitler, never mind the fact that he murdered millions of innocents himself. And some say that communist atrocities were secular — not motivated by ethnic divisions. (Yes, I know: Stalin was from Georgia).